Agellon 1

Jasmine Agellon
Professor Kufs
English 114B
29 March 2016

Money or Morals
College in a nutshell: Social life, grades, sleep, money; Now choose two but choose
wisely because each one will have its long lasting effects. Being a first time college student
comes with many responsibilities that most students did not expect to be coming their way.
Discovering that after all those times we told our parents we could not wait to be out of the house
and become independent, we soon realize how hard life actually is. That is when people begin to
regret what they initially thought and take back what they said. We truly discover that having
money problems is harder to deal with than a simple time out.After applying to college, most
people realize that they do not have nearly enough money to attend their dream university. This
is when people make the decision to either take out loans or get a part time job. It seems easy to
do right? Not entirely, having a part time job or full time job in college not only affects you
mentally, but it affects your relationship with everyone around you, your schoolwork, and your
college experience overall.
Jonathan M. Orszag wrote, Learning and Earning: College Life, in which he explains the
outcomes of what a part-time job can do to a college student. He knowledges that us college
students are just trying to make ends meet and we will do anything in our power to do so. The

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author explained how having a part time job is now a common thing for full time college
students. While reading the article it came to my attention that beginning in 1984, the fractions of
college students between the ages of 16 to 24 who worked fulltime or part-time has dramatically
increased from 49 to a whopping 57 percent. Today working a part-time job is not uncommon
but most students push to work a full-time job. Orszag states, Research suggests that such work
may not be harmful, and may even be helpful for undergraduates if it is limited. For example,
part-time on-campus work appears to have no negative effects on students' enrollment rates or
GPAs, and it may even have a positive effect. Students similarly generally perceive that limited
work does not have a negative effect on their academics. Full-time work, on the other hand, does
appear to have negative effects on student enrollment rates and academic performance. This
just proves that so many college students are over thinking about what the future has in store for
them and the constant reminder that they need money to get through college brings us to realize
we have make life long decisions.
From different articles that I found I have read many examples of daily lives that are
affected by money. The article written by Vohs, Kathleen D.is an article she wrote explaining the
different interactions encountered with an experiment she did with partners about people
thinking about money. Throughout your daily routine in college so many things are running
through your head all day and the thought of money is one thought that determines what your
next move is. People believe that they can not get through life without money and that is
represented in this quote about a hypothesis about money Our first hypothesis was that money
is linked to a focus on personal inputs and outputs, which may manifest behaviorally as an
emphasis on personal performance. This prediction came from the fact that people use money to
procure goods and services to enable them to meet personal needs, which they can do far more

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efficiently with money than they could without it. A secondary source of support comes from the
fact that money rewards successful task completion, which means that money often follows from
performance efforts. Hence, we predicted that reminding people of the concept of money would
encourage individual performance efforts. This quote accurately represents the value and
meaning college students give to have or earning money without caring about the negative
effects that follow of obtaining a part time job. Money issues and the thoughts of not having
enough money in college pushes us students to strive to become more of an adult which
stresses the thought of not being to eat, or having necessities that we need to get by in our daily
lives. Personal thoughts of having new items that we want also affect us and that is when most
peoples values change.
With having money it gives you a sense of power. College is the time to grow up and
make your adult decisions. While youre thinking about the amount of money you just spent on a
text book you just passed by someone wearing the new Nike jacket and you really liked and
wanted it for yourself. That is when it clicks, you just decided that you are getting your part-time
job that is going to help you get by, and buy yourself your wants. We college students are
consistently thinking about what is going to happen next. In Money Addiction, an article
written by Dr. Tian Dayton, he makes many valid points about how money can show different
sides of people. He states, But just as with the magical drink me elixir from Alice in
Wonderland, money can make us feel very, very big or very, very small, proud or extremely self
conscious, empowered or strangely out of control. We live constantly on the everyday conflict if
we need certain things or what to do to get more money so we can live comfortably. As a
young adult we are trying to learn the ropes of responsibility so we do not depend on anyone

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anymore. So we do whatever we can to prove within ourselves and others we can be independent
but sometimes with money it changes what we do.
Coming into college as a first time freshman was life changing so many responsibilities
that I never encountered hit me real quick. Experiencing this first hand my first semester of
college was just testing the waters and adjusting to the new surroundings, but with that money
came into play. By second semester I realize that I needed to get a part-time job to help my mom
out with living expenses. A couple months into the second semester I found my first job, I never
worked a real job so this was a big mile-stone in my life. A month into the job I was hit with the
biggest reality check of my life, trying to balance going to school, going to work, seeing my
friends at college, and seeing my mom and friends back home. It was way too much to juggle.
Soon I started to see the affects this job was having on me mentally and physically. I was
becoming very sad knowing I could not see my mom anymore whenever I wanted to and I saw
how this affected her too, then I started not to talk to my best friend back home as much and that
made us distant, our relationship is not the same as it was before. My grades started to change by
seeing that I knew I was dealing with a big decision, going to work on the weekends from five to
10 really took a toll on my body too. Right there and then I knew something had to change.
Soon I started to realize that I could not have everything I wanted that brought value to my life,
for example going out with friends, visiting my hometown, maintaining my grades to their
highest ability. The job kept a good amount of money in my bank account and I was able to have
nice things, and not have to worry about eating or I knew if I spent money that I had a pay check
coming next week. This did not make me happy at all I was losing what mattered to me the most,
even my health and I knew that this was it I officially had to make a life decisions that effected
not just my life but others around me. Money does things to people, they will do anything to

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keep it to feel power or a sense of comfort, and this is when many people have the controversy of
what really matters to them.
Being a first time college student at age eighteen is one of the biggest factors of your life
and it will show you and others who you truly are at the end of the day. I experienced first hand
what it was like dealing with the ultimate test, every adult told me about since I was little, I
never really listened until I lived it. Money has its power over everyone even though it might be
a necessity in our daily lives the side affects, that money makes us encounter is what shapes us
to be the person we are. Everything college has to offer is hard to processes sometimes but your
priorities like, grades, relationships, and you and your wellbeing, that is what is going to be your
answer to, College in a nutshell: Social life, grades, sleep, money. Now pick two.

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Works Cited

Dayton, Dr. Tian. Money Addiction. Huffingtonposst.com. The Huffington Post,17

Nov. 2011. Web. 13 Mar.2016.
Moye, David. Wear A Suit of Money and Find Out Just How Greedy NYC is.
Huffingtonpost.com. The Huffington Post, 24 Nov. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.
Piff, Paul. Transcript of Does Money Make You Mean? TED. Dec. 2013.
Web. 13 Mar. 2016
Jonathan M. Orszag, Peter R. Orszag, and Diane M. Whitmore.Learning And Earning:
Working In College Web. 22 Mar. 2016

Vohs, Kathleen D., Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode. Merely Activating the
Concept of Money Changes Personal and Interpersonal Behavior. Current Directions in
Psychological Science 17.3 (2008): 208-12. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

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